Ship Attack Shows South Korean Quandary Over How to Respond to North

Monday

Apr 26, 2010 at 5:11 AM

South Korea is inching closer to blaming North Korea for an attack, but the South’s options in responding appear to be limited.

CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s defense minister on Sunday said a torpedo attack was the most likely cause for the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed at least 40 sailors last month, a statement that inched the country closer to placing blame on North Korea and added urgency to the question of how the South might respond.

Still, the minister did not mention the North, continuing a cautious government approach that reflects the lack of good options available to South Korea’s leaders if they decide that North Korea was responsible for what would be one of the most serious attacks since the Korean War ended in a truce.

Any military retaliation could provoke a response from a country with the capacity to strike Seoul and a mercurial leader who has proved to be violent and unpredictable. A lesser response, hard-liners in the South argue, could lead North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to conclude that he could lash out again without facing consequences.

The announcement on Sunday by Defense Minister Kim Tae-young appeared to fit a pattern that some analysts say shows the government is carefully building a case for a limited response — doling out information slowly enough so emotions ease before a final assignment of blame.

Mr. Kim’s statement came two days after South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, met with two former presidents in what was understood in Confucian Korea as an attempt to consult elders and build consensus about how to proceed. The two former presidents, Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Young-sam, once again proved their bona fides as hard-liners on the North, speaking emotionally about past attacks by Pyongyang — including a bombing in 1983 that killed several cabinet members.

Both men also expressed certainty that North Korea was behind the ship’s sinking and urged Mr. Lee to deal “resolutely” with the North. But, significantly, neither mentioned the possibility of even a limited military attack, instead recommending harsh economic punishment, including the possibility of further dismantling the “Sunshine Policy” of reaching out to the North with aid and business ventures.

The meeting could provide political cover for Mr. Lee with fellow conservatives since Mr. Chun, a former military dictator, remains one of the country’s most prominent anti-Communists. During his brutal rule, those who argued for better relations with the North were often imprisoned and sometimes tortured, as were those who wrote or read books that cast the North in anything but an intensely critical light.

So far, few South Koreans have called for military retaliation if it is determined that North Korea is responsible. Even under its most virulent anti-Communist leaders, South Korea has responded to past attacks, including the 1987 downing of a South Korean airliner, with palpable anger, but little action. In at least one of those cases — the bombing that killed the cabinet members — a revenge attack was planned, but never carried out. In others, under a liberal government, leaders reacted by trying harder to nudge the North back to the negotiating table on its nuclear program.

Those relatively mild responses were before the North effectively changed the calculus of retribution by forging ahead with a nuclear program, making what intelligence experts say is fuel for at least eight nuclear weapons, or possibly the bombs themselves. Although it remains unclear if the North has the ability to deliver a viable nuclear weapon, it threatened last week to use what it called its “nuclear deterrent” if it was attacked; Pyongyang has denied sinking the South’s ship. Any tough reaction from the South now could also frighten investors and harm the economy, which has been recovering quickly from the global financial crisis.

Given the stakes, analysts have been speculating for weeks about how Mr. Lee, who came to office promising a tougher stance against the North, would respond to the warship’s sinking.

Some speculated that even if he became convinced that North Korea was responsible, he would hide the evidence rather than put his country in jeopardy. North Korea, though impoverished, bristles with conventional weapons, including missiles, rockets and artillery that could ravage Seoul.

Other analysts have argued that Mr. Lee was planning just the opposite — calling in international inspectors for the ongoing examination of the ship to build support for a strong multilateral reaction if the North is guilty. Such a finding, they say, could help him bolster his argument that neither the United States nor China should give the North incentives to return to long-stalled nuclear talks, especially if those negotiations are unlikely to yield real change.

A determination of North Korean culpability could also help make the case for economic sanctions with teeth. History has shown that sanctions against Pyongyang cannot work unless China and other countries besides the United States join in. China has been loath to push North Korea hard, fearing a collapse in Pyongyang’s struggling leadership that could send refugees flooding over the border.

Still, even Mr. Lee might be reluctant to go too far. He has been pushing for months to hold a summit meeting with Kim Jong-il and might not want to give up that chance to show that his tougher approach, after years of what he calls liberal coddling, might yield results.

In the end, should it be determined that Pyongyang sank the ship, the greatest danger could be to the “Sunshine Policy,” a legacy of the last two liberal presidents.

The policy has already been faltering, with the South cutting all shipments of fertilizer and food after the North pulled out of nuclear talks and with the shutdown of a jointly operated tourist resort in the North after the North’s military killed a South Korean tourist.

Any further cutbacks could leave North Korea, which continues to grapple with food shortages and crippling inflation, even more desperate — a danger in itself.

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